Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 30 minutes
The Components
As the name suggests, Ticket to Ride: The Card Game is a pure card game.
There are 158 total cards, each full-sized, of medium-to-heavy weight, and linen-textured. This total includes 96 train cards, 46 destination ticket cards, and 6 big city bonus cards.
The cards all feature high-quality artwork by Julien Delval with some attractive design work used to create stylized steam-era borders. As with the other Ticket to Ride games, the gameplay of this one is all about colors (yellow, blue, white, black, red, green, orange, and purple); as has been the case with all the recent Ticket to Ride releases, good effort has been put forth to use symbols to make the cards accessible to color blind players too.
My one complaint with the cards is that the backs look too much like the fronts, a fact which I've seen cause multiple players minor confusion.
The rulebook is 12 pages, but that includes rules in three languages, each of which includes illustrations and examples. I found the rules for 4-player play a little awkward since they're separated from the rest, but otherwise the rules read well.
Overall, Days of Wonder always does a great job in producing their games, and Ticket to Ride: The Card Game is no exception. I've given it a "4" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
The object of Ticket to Ride: The Card Game is to score the most points by completing tickets and building routes to Big Cities.
Setup: Each player starts the game with 1 engine, 7 other train cards, and 6 destination cads. The eight train cards form their initial hand. They must keep at least one of their destinations.
In addition 5 cards are flipped face-up next to the draw pile.
The Train Cards. These cards display either one of the 8 colors or a (wild) locomotive.
The Destination Cards. These cards list two cities (at least one of which is a Big City). They also list a required set of 1-5 cards; the colors depicted are needed to complete the ticket. So, for example, Seattle to Miami is black/white/red/red/orange. Chicago to New York meanwhile is a single yellow. Finally, each destination card lists a score.
Order of Play: There are two phases to each player's turn:
- Move Cards
- Take An Action
Move Cards: You're going to end up with cards in front of you in your "railyard" (a temporary holding place where cards are vulnerable). Each turn you get to move some of those to your "on-the-track stack" (which is the pile of cards that actually count toward your destinations).
Each turn you take one card of each color in your railyard and place it in your on-the-track stack face-down. You'll have to remember what's here.
Take an Action: On your turn you can: draw train cards; draw destination tickets; or play train cards.
Draw Train Cards. You can take two trains from among the face-up or face-down choices, except if you take a face-up locomotive, that counts as both draws.
Draw Destination Cards. You draw 4 new destination tickets, and must keep at least 0 of them (e.g., you can discard up to all of your new destinations).
Play Train Cards. You can either play three train cards, each of them a different color, or else a set of two or more train cards all of the same color. A set of the same color may include locomotives. All of these cards go into your railyard.
Except you can't play cards of a color that's already in any railyard (including yours) unless you play more of the color than the other player has out. In that case the other player is forced to discard his cards of that color.
Thus cards in your railyard are vulnerable to being lost until they get into your on-the-track stack. (They also can't be used to complete tickets if they're still in your railyard at game end.)
Ending the Game: After the last train card is drawn, each player gets one last turn. Then everyone looks at all the cards in their on-the-track-stack and matches them up with the destination tickets.
Completed tickets are worth positive points, while incomplete tickets are worth negative points. In addition the player who made the most connections to each Big City gets that bonus card, worth 8-15 points.
The player with the most points wins.
(Four-player games work slightly differently, with players getting a second time through the train deck to finish tickets after the first one.)
Relationships to Other Games
Ticket to Ride: The Card Game is of course based on Alan Moon's Ticket to Ride board game. As I've said, I feel like it's mainly a thematic basis. Both games have destination tickets that you're trying to complete, but the methods you use to do so are pretty different. The original board game is straight set collection with a pretty big emphasis on geography while the card game includes memory aspects instead.
This also isn't the first train-themed card game that Alan Moon has designed. Freight Train is another.
However the game that Ticket to Ride: The Card Game reminds me of most isn't an Alan Moon game. Instead it's Uwe Rosenberg's Mamma Mia! which similarly has recipe cads that you're trying to match, a face-down deck of cards that you have to remember, and some wild cards which can help you finish up incomplete recipes (though in Mamma Mia! those "wild" cards are just what happens to be in your hand).
The Game Design
Though its mechanics are simple, Ticket to Ride: The Card Game's gameplay is quite interesting. The whole idea of playing cards out to your rail yard, and leaving them vulnerable until they're collecting is an interesting and innovative mechanic. It leaves you numerous decisions: are you willing to risk singletons; should you save to squish an opponent's set; how much do you need to pad your engines with normal cards; etc.
The memory aspect of the game will probably be the most controversial, as some percentage of game players hate games where memory is important. Clearly, the mechanic is needed to make the game work. (I can imagine it would take about twice as long to play if everyone was always going through their on-the-track stacks.) I actually don't think memory is as important as you might think. You just need to keep in mind a general sense of what's in the pile. Beyond that, I think the gameplay turns to risk taking, as you make decisions on what you may or may not have stored up.
Finally, I'll comment that the number of players makes for pretty big changes in how the game is played, much as is the case for the original Ticket to Ride. The more players the game has, the tighter it seems to get, to the point where 4 players feels quite "crowded", just like 5 player games do in the board game. I played the card game with all three player numbers (2, 3, and 4), and I enjoyed it the most with three because of the combination of improved elegance (over 4-player play), some player interaction, and not quite as much stress as in a 4-player game.
Overall, Ticket to Ride: The Card Game is a well-designed, elegant game that's a terrific 30-minute filler. I've given it a "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Ticket to Ride: The Card Game returns to many of the themes of its board-game cousin, but is a unique, original, and fun game all its own. It's well recommended for anyone looking for a 30-minute filler.
